I have it. Looks great, no worries. Good value for money

Nice. Was looking at the apron stuff they had too.

On that one I passed. I like the lit up metal apron in the LE already enough. In a pro might be different.

you can keep relighting orb over and over by using Hadrons to help complete rounds of shots. Orb values are also much higher than Groot and if you lock balls in Orb during Orb MB you multiply the jackpot. Again, your billions upon billions will come when you reach Immolation Initiative! If you get frustrated you can also increase your Hadrons so you get 4 or 5 each time vs 3.

You will all get there soon! Took us a good 6 months to crack the game and now can get deep on demand (and we are only average players). Just need to get muscle memory on the shot geometry!

Yes I have it and love it and also got one for my STh.

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Also I HIGHLY recommend the green LED lighting from Mezel mods (or some people DIY) for the back ramps behind backboard. It adds a ton of character! You can see in my photo above with the Woz Mods.

damn that looks sharp !!! Can’t wait now . I have a PRO so trying to spice it up a bit even though it already looks great. Ordered ones for my Maiden too that should be in my home next month !

I have it but never hooked it up. You have any pics available how you did it? I got freaked out when I had to remove rubber around one of the GI ‘s? And gave up. Sorry still feeling my way around this stuff.

Easy to do. Use a razor knife to cut rubber boot, pulls off easy with a pair of needle nose pliers. Go for it!!

I believe the instructions are also on Mezels website. It was soooo easy.

Issue with the Orb shot on my GOTG Pro I noticed tonight.

The game starts with the Orb drop target down. It looks like it "tries" to pop up, but it won't. When I hit the orb shot the same thing happens, it makes a subtle sound but it doesn't catch or register as a shot.

Any thoughts/ideas?

Wonder if the Orb standup target switch in the back of the orb lock or orb is stuck in the "active" or "on" position? Sometimes its just a matter of minor adjustment to the switch. Worth checking in the active switch test menu. You would just got into active switch test and see if it is registered "on" and then press it to see if it triggers. On Stranger Things my demogorgan wasn't registering hits. Thought it was the optos but in the end it had to do with the switches for ramp being down were stuck in "on" position. Minor adjustment to switch with needle-nose fixed it. Could be another issue though.

Last night I had the best game I've ever had, beating the Wizard mode to Save Xander. Really fun getting that deep into the game.

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Great game that started my addiction back in December of 2019 (I have added 2 more pins since then) but I wanted to see if anyone else had a small "bump" or raised area on the playfield just above the top of Ronan's hammer. On the underside of the playfield this is where the metal cylinder (holding the magnet) touches the thin underside. Is this common?

I noticed that on my machine, and someone else posted about that recently as well.

So this happens quite often. Anyone else? Ball gets stuck on Groots lip. Most times I have to push the machine around to get it out.

Damn!!! That’s insane ! Had mine for about a month now best I can do is 306 Million

The only time I notice an effect is when an eject from Groot (multi-ball, end of game) crosses over and it resulting in a redirect. I wasn't sure if someone had experienced this at NIB set up or if it was something happened over time due to the thinness of the playfield underneath / magnet mechanism etc...

I finally got confirmation (from freight company) that my NIB Pro has arrived across town here in NorCal! (I just arranged for delivery on Monday morning.) It will be interesting to see what build-date, gamecode version and node board revs were used....

Good luck. I am so glad I got a March 2021 build with 1.06. Got my game last month and love Clelands code.

Orb protector on the front and protects back left side by groot (common plastic breakage point).

Mod - For Sale

GUARDIANS - ORB AIRBALL + PLASTIC PROTECTOR Archived

New (selling multiple, business) - “New & improved version. Made from 1/8” Pet-g plastic! (13th run just made…) GOTG Orb Airball protector - combines a few things: 1. Upfront Orb - airball protector 2. Ba...”

2022-08-18

Saukville, WI

cpr9999

20

Archived after: 67 days

Viewed: 1573 times

Status: Not sold

Just installed mine a week ago and it's perfect. Thanks!

Hi all, have been preparing to purchase a new GOTG, it will be my first pinball. Came across some YouTube videos discussing poor product from Stern, specifically the Spike2 stuff. What have you guys found, is it really crap or are the negative comments blown out of proportion? Thanks!

If it's this one

check the posts after this one https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/continued-playfield-issues-with-jjp-and-stern/page/154#post-6106231

you can also forum search for "GMA_p3ozGVg" and see other discussions.

I've found the node boards to be quite reliable. I've had 3 NIB sterns in the last 2 years and no node board issues. My fourth NIB is on the way. There were some early reliability issues but those have long since been fixed. I have found that Stern supports the games above and beyond. I've had parts shipped out for a game almost 2 years old.

Stern did respond to that video

I remember watching that same video above when thinking about my first pin(deadpool). Ive had 13 of them now and havent had any major problems on any of them. Buy with confidence.

No worries. Have friends with plenty of spike 1-2 boards and the first serious issue still has to develop.

Sooooo....most of the "upgrades" add more shots to each mode but some don't. So what's the upgrade on those? Just points? Like sanctuary for instance.

My takeaway when I first saw that video was that it was an understandable opinion from a viewpoint of change and has plenty of parallels in other product markets. Somebody who has decades of experience maintaining pinball technology with discrete components that can they can troubleshoot and replace individually can easily view a networked integrated modular design as harder to troubleshoot or more expensive to maintain since replacing one bad part may require replacing an entire board instead of just the bad part. That's not necessarily wrong, with the changes in technology come some new skill requirements too.

The newer technologies in Spike 2 have better flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Just like the automotive industry it requires additional skills and tools to maintain a modern car, a few wrenches and elbow grease just isn't enough any more. When fixing a pinball machine requires mainly cleaning, basic mechanical skills and soldering and everything has it's own wire to trace that's pretty different from working with SMT PCBs and a CANBUS network. The upside is that a well-designed modern system should have higher reliability, but it's often fixable when something goes wrong if you have the knowledge and skills. Not everybody skilled in the old technology has applicable skill in newer technology. That's just a side effect of progress.

Since you went the cargument route let me counter with a few points:

Warranty: any new vehicle is going to have at least a 2 year warranty on everything and at least a reasonabl if not robust dealer network to service the vehicle.

Service Options: Car shops, dealers, mechanics, etc. are everywhere, you can even get a free diagnostic read-out why your check engine light is on at Autozones, etc. Contrast that with finding someone to work on your machine if it breaks, doesn't really matter what manufacturer or era or game in 99% of the world you are going to have a tough time finding someone to work on your game much less have choices. Yes the skills of the mechanics working on vehicles has had to evolve greatly the last 20 years or so but there's still a lot of options for service.

It's not a car: at it's core Pinball is a commercial machine intended to make money on location somewhere. The harder it is for operators to service them and get them running again the less likely they are to operate them. Of course if the system really is much more reliable this is a great thing but you'll have a hard time convincing me that Whitestar wasn't INCREDBILY reliable while also being rather easy to service, just as an example. Obviously the tech had to change to support new features but there is no doubt that Stern is still not being as user-serviced friendly as they could / should be with regards to Spike and information about repairing Node boards. This wouldn't necessarily stop me from buying one at all based on what information we do have so far though.

Thank you all for your insight, I'll do a little more research but think I will probably move ahead with purchasing. It's mostly for my wife as she's always wanted one sooo, brownie points!

Well hell, if you have wife approval what are you waiting for?!?!?

My takeaway when I first saw that video was that it was an understandable opinion from a viewpoint of change and has plenty of parallels in other product markets. Somebody who has decades of experience maintaining pinball technology with discrete components that can they can troubleshoot and replace individually can easily view a networked integrated modular design as harder to troubleshoot or more expensive to maintain since replacing one bad part may require replacing an entire board instead of just the bad part. That's not necessarily wrong, with the changes in technology come some new skill requirements too.

The newer technologies in Spike 2 have better flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Just like the automotive industry it requires additional skills and tools to maintain a modern car, a few wrenches and elbow grease just isn't enough any more. When fixing a pinball machine requires mainly cleaning, basic mechanical skills and soldering and everything has it's own wire to trace that's pretty different from working with SMT PCBs and a CANBUS network. The upside is that a well-designed modern system should have higher reliability, but it's often fixable when something goes wrong if you have the knowledge and skills. Not everybody skilled in the old technology has applicable skill in newer technology. That's just a side effect of progress.

All valid points, and I'm not trying to justify anything specific. The only significant difference I see is simply one of scale, if pinball was as common as cars then the support infrastructure would be as available. The difference is that while there are more cars than people within a 60 mile radius of me, there are zero pinball operators or public pins. That's why car shops and mechanics are everywhere, simple scale. The cost and reliability advantages of the newer technology applies to both cars and pinball. It's a perfectly valid preference to prefer older technology because it requires older skills to fix, but the modularity of the newer technology should increase reliability and simplify replacement for people who don't have the skills to fix broken modules.

Anecdotally, nobody in 3 years has been able to turn off the "Service required" message on my 2018 car. Not autozone, not my oil change place, not my dealer. My wife's 2022 car texts me messages with various system errors, and several times has disables certain features due to error. We have the texts and pictures of errors on the dashboard but when a mechanic checks the car computer nobody has been able to determine the causes. At least car warranties are longer than pinball machines, but there haven't been a lot of cases in my life where having a warranty fixed a problem. As Tommy-Boy said, I can crap in a box and slap a warranty on it, I have spare time.

The purpose of cars and pinball machines is the same for the manufacturers, to make sales and profit. If car companies could end their part at the sale I'm sure they would love that, but regulation and competition requires them to support their products on paper for a long time after the sale. Another scale situation, if every family averaged 2 pinball machines I bet we'd see similar scale advantages. But, alas, deeproot's expertise to bring pinball to the masses fell slightly short of pinball for every family<sarcasm.>

I completely agree about the accessibility to information about Spike 2. Having a full schematic to the machine is a big deal. Again though this fits the car analogy well, cars didn't used to have undocumented technology either and now they have proprietary boxes all over that can't be fixed, only replaced. If we had access to schematics of all the Spike 2 nodes and for the entire machine that would be wonderful. It seems to be something sacrificed for progress. I'd love to see Stern open source their systems, or at least publish the information. They wouldn't have to give up any rights they don't want to, but that's not their culture.

I've gone way off topic from GOTG, sorry folks. GOTG is my first pin, and I've modded it heavily and am still running down one issue that I think is a loose connector on a node board somewhere. Intermittent and hard to find but so far I'm pretty impressed and happy with the technology.

I asked the seller to confirm manufacturing date and spike version. I know the factory has been out of stock so I'm curious how long it's been in the box. When did Spike2 go into production? Thanks again everyone!

I am THAT guy. I have a NIB GOTG sitting in my garage for two days now and haven't had a moment to unpack it!!!! I hope to do so tonight....

Get it before the price jump coming Jan 1st. Will save $700

Long time coming man! enjoy it!

I think there have been 17 or so Spike 2 pins. I think Batman 66 was the first in 2016.

Appreciate the help!

Ok, got confirmation that the one available is from the latest run so I'm guessing with the newer 1.08 release. You all talk about the modified code from cleland and I was excited about that, but absent of that upgrade, do you all still think it's worth it? I'm a complete newcomer and reading on here about all the modifications you've all made its making me a bit nervous. Were you happy with the stock game and just liked to tinker or were the mods necessary improvements? Thanks again, really appreciate everyone's comments.

Since its an older title you should play it before committing. Actually always sage advise to play before you commit to buying if possible (only the LE versions are impossible to follow this advise lately with them selling out in a day).

When I got mine, it was awhile before I discovered cleland's mod, and is/was still a fun game to play. cleland's mod just makes it that much better. I'm sure there's a good chance they'll eventually break into the 1.08 code to get an updated version of the mod available for it at some point.

Tim

Agreed. There are a couple arcade/bar places in town that my wife and I went to for that reason. We tried many different games and GOTG was the far and away favorite. I've been trying to purchase since earlier this Spring and just want to make sure I understand all the recent updates before buying. Thanks!

Also give AIQ a try. I bought a guardians pro last month and bought an Avengers pro that was delivered on Monday. Both great games. Avengers is pretty damn great.

Looking for a topper and armour if anyone is interested in selling.

I bought mine not because of the Cleland code, but because I loved the game. After adding Cleland it still took me a little bit to decide for sure that I was going to keep it, probably in part because I had played it so many times with the Stern code in the past.

Great game, I would still always play a game before buying, but I'm sure you'll be happy with it either way.

What’s the verdict on the code version?
I’m also thinking about getting one and am in the same area as you — where did you order from?

I purchased from classic games rooms in Georgia. I had to move another machine around to make room for it so haven’t quite unboxed it yet!!! Hard to believe I am my own delay now!!!

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Like your box. Here's how mine came. I said leave it on the truck, I'm not accepting that.

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That must have made you sick.... mine is arriving Monday, hopefully in better condition than yours.

I'm in Nor Cal too, if you don't get around to opening it, glad to come pick it up. LOL

Finally unboxed!!! Build date of August 19, 2021, running 1.08 gamecode

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